Now farmers and landowners and eider makers in a dozen
counties are anxious to plant orchards. They pay well ; and it is held that the cider apple is a valuable adjunct to orchards of eating and cooking apples, as it helps the grower to sell the smaller fruit not good enough for the market. Planting such trees is a good investment individually and nationally, as the French have proved. Here is one English example of the effect of planting. Some sixty acres of poor land in Herefordshire were planted in 1000, and the land (at a date when prices were higher than now) was bought for £12 10s. an acre. It is valued to-day at .70 an acre ; and the income from it is satisfactory. To plant trees would Certainly be a good national investment, and for a nation a rapidly maturing investment. If ome steps are not taken to remedy the defects of our landed system, the cider orchards —it is said—will have virtually vanished within the next twenty-five years.
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